


Breaking the Rules

by loveparade



Category: Dexter (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:26:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveparade/pseuds/loveparade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place shortly after the events of Season 7.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking the Rules

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foxy11814](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxy11814/gifts).



It’s been a week and Deb still hasn’t even talked to me. She can barely even look at me. When she found out Hannah escaped she didn’t yell or scream. No signs of her usual fury, bubbling under the surface, ready to burst out in a stream of profanity like a blasphemous avenging angel. My sister has always been the more emotional of the two of us. She doesn’t have my expertise in the masking of emotion. She’s only been doing it for a couple months. I’ve been doing it my whole life.

The Miami Police Department was shocked to discover the bodies of Captain Maria LaGuerta and Hector Estrada, especially as Captain LaGuerta’s potentially psychotic obsession with the Bay Harbor Butcher case came to light. No doubt motivated by her illicit love for the Butcher, Sergeant James Doakes, she attempted to frame one Dexter Morgan for the crimes by murdering Estrada. Estrada fought back. Both parties were shot and killed in the struggle. It’s the kind of sensational story that the media will snatch up in an instant. And I become the humble victim who merely wants his privacy.

Except that Deb shot LaGuerta. And it’s written all over her face.

I step out of the car onto the pavement, waves of heat rising from it even in January. A crowd is gathered around a line of uniformed police officers, bowed outward to prevent entry to a crime scene. I pass through the throng, the line of police bending to make way for me. They all just know me as the blood guy if they know me at all. Most of them would shoot me on sight if they knew what I really was. A monster.

I walk out onto the beach, my steps unsteady in the dunes. A group of detectives surrounds a dead body looking appropriately grim. Female, early twenties at a guess. Nude, lying prone, arms at her side, legs splayed. Bruising around her neck. Probably strangled.

“...petechial hemorrhaging suggests the victim was strangled,” Masuka says as I walk up. “Hey Dexter.”

I can almost feel Deb tense up at my presence.

“Her body seems stripped pretty clean,” Masuka continues. “I bet we’re not going to find much evidence on her. Whoever did this seems like a pro. But she looks like a pro too. Huh huh huh.”

Masuka always knows how to make light of an inappropriate situation

“What?” he asks. “She’s probably a prostitute or at least a stripper.”

After a moment of awkward silence I realize just a little too late that everyone’s waiting for me to start talking. I stutter forward slightly with my kit.

“It looks like there are several contusions on the back of the head,” I start. “Most likely from different angles. My guess would be she was on her knees, and the blows came from someone standing upright, attacking downward.”

This wasn’t a crime of passion. This was meticulous.

“There doesn’t appear to be any major skull fracturing under the contusions.”

The blows are almost gentle.

“The attacker likely used something slightly padded. Something thick. A phone book, perhaps. The pools of blood here are far too small, though. It was likely she was killed elsewhere and moved here.”

My mind drowns out the idle chatter. It’s mostly speculation and my mind is focused on other things. Mostly Deb. I take a few blood and tissue samples with my kit, hurrying the last few as I see Deb leaving the scene. I tuck the samples away and jog to catch up.

“Hey, Deb,” I say.

“What,” she responds, all to quickly. It’s not a question. It’s an expression of distaste.

“Can we maybe talk?” I ask.

“About what, Dexter?”

Her arms are crossed, her mouth pursed. Sure signs that she doesn’t want to be talking to me. I continue anyway.

“About what happened,” I start, but she turns in disgust, almost walking away. “I know this is hard.”

“Fuck you, Dexter. How do you know how hard this is? You’re used to this shit. I didn’t want any part of it. I didn’t want this. And now I have it and it’s your fucking fault.”

I’m at a loss. I can feel my heart beating faster. An unfamiliar fear. Have I ruined my relationship with Deb? Have I lost the only constant in my life?

“I... I’m sorry, Deb.”

“Yeah, I bet you’re real fuckin’ sorry,” she says as she walks away.

* * *

I sit in my lab staring at a blank screen, needing to fill out this blood spatter report, but barely even being able to think. I can’t spare a thought for Samantha Billings. I need a distraction. I start filtering through police records for similar cases. Prostitutes, contusions, no skull fractures, dumping bodies. There has to be an MO. This murder is too meticulous to be random chance. I finally come upon something. A killer in Georgia. They had a suspect, James Taylor, but they never had enough to charge him. Similar cases started cropping up all along the coast leading right down here to Miami. Seems like my guy.

* * *

It doesn’t take long to track him down. It’s surprising how much you can do with someone’s social security number and a bit of internet savvy. He’s been staying at a hotel near the coast. Near the beach. His dumping ground. But I need evidence. I need proof. If this nightmare with LaGuerta has taught me anything, it’s that the Code exists for a reason. I don’t have a Dark Passenger any more, I have to take responsibility for my actions now. I have to maintain control.

I doesn’t take long for James to leave his motel room. And he leaves in a hurry. Now’s my chance to find out if James has been enjoying his time in Miami a little too much. Luckily this motel still has analog logs. Makes my life easier. I easily slip in glancing about the room. It’s a mess. Empty pizza boxes, crushed beer cans, clearly James doesn’t get out a lot. I check the bathroom. There’s what looks like a bikini top soaking in the sink. The water is a little too red, and James is a little too flat chested for that top. I bet that red is what’s left of Samantha. I take a dropper of the liquid. Hopefully I can get a reasonable blood sample. I briefly take note of a couple of loose bullets on a bedside table. No gun.

* * *

It takes me twenty minutes to get back to the station to run the bloody water. Twenty minutes is a long time, apparently. The department is in disarray. It takes me several minutes to calm someone down enough to get “Lieutenant Morgan’s been shot” out of someone with a uniform.  
Deb.

The hospital is 10 minutes away. I get there in 5. Critical condition. Might not make it. Was following a lead on the beach murder. James Taylor. That fear rises up again. She’s been distraught. Distracted. It could have made her slow on the trigger. Slow enough to get her shot. She got shot because of me. James Taylor shot my sister because of me.

I race back to his motel. The light is on. Your first mistake, James. I can hear a lot of movement inside. A lamp crashes over and the room goes dark. Someone’s in a hurry. The locks on the door click, James steps out, and a needle slips into his neck.

* * *

James wakes tied to the bed. Disoriented. I fiddle with the gun in my hands.

“Shooting a police officer is a bad idea, James.”

“Oh god, who are you?” he says, desperately. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I panicked. Oh god.”

“Did you panic when you carefully beat Samantha Billings over the head and then strangled her to death? Strangling a person isn’t easy. It takes time. Effort. You have to believe in it.”

I get closer and closer to his face.

“You know how I know? Because I’ve done it.”

“Oh god,” he cries. “I didn’t kill that girl. Fuck. Patrick did. God fucking dammit. My dumb fucking brother. He killed that girl and the cops came looking for him. I had to do something. I had to protect him.”

It is not until then that I realize it. I didn’t run the blood. I didn’t confirm that James did it. I broke the Code. I broke it for Deb. I consider the knife in my hands for a moment. Maybe that’s what love is. Breaking the rules. Deb did it for me. Maybe it’s time I returned the favor.

I sit at the side of Deb’s hospital bed when she wakes. Her eyes open slowly at first, then suddenly once she sees me. Her eyes go wide in a moment of terror. I can almost feel the fear in her.

“James Taylor,” I say.

“Who the fuck is that?”

“He’s the guy who shot you,” I say. She shudders slightly. Not from the pain of her yet fresh wounds, but from the idea of me killing him. She lurches slightly as if she might be sick.

“Did you,” she starts. She can’t even say the words. That fear rises up in me again. It fills my chest, making my eyes sting ever so slightly.

“No,” I say, choking back that horrible fear. Her whole body relaxes, the tension flowing out of her. But she’s confused. I explain.

“He’s being held in lockup, Quinn is bringing him up on charges of attempted murder now. They found him passed out in a motel room with the weapon that shot you in hand. They even found an article of clothing belong to Ms. Billings. They’ll be looking for his brother soon, I expect. All from an anonymous tip.”

She let’s that information settle, occasionally glancing my direction nervously.

“What, did he not meet your Code?”

She almost spits the question out.

“I still wanted to.”

“Out of some sick fucking need to kill?”

“He hurt you.”

The words come like poison from my tongue. The amount of vitriol surprises me. And from Deb’s face it surprises her too.

“What stopped you?” she asks.

“You.”

The tears well up in her eyes as she looks away.

“Jesus fuck, Dexter.”

I never know what to do in situations like this. Never know the right words to say. Did I upset her? I thought this was what she wanted. For me to control my urges. My reverie is broken as I feel her hand close around mine, and for just a moment I see in her face some of what we used to have. Before she found out who I really was. And just like that the tightness in my chest evaporates and I take a deep breathe.

Her hand slides away again, as does her gaze.

“Do you have a blood report to be filling out?” she asks, still avoiding my gaze. I nod affirmation.

“Then go to fucking work, you asshole.”

Her lips purse, but her eyes sparkle just enough to tell me that part of my sister is still in there. Past the tired, and the hurt, and the pain, she will make it through.

I haven’t lost my sister yet.


End file.
